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Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Fallout from Bin Laden's Death and What Did Pakistan Know?

Fallout from the death of Osama bin Laden continues to ripple throughout the world. Bin Laden's burial at sea has been criticized,
even though that's a far better fate than the nearly 3,000 who were
murdered at the World Trade Center. Some criticize that the US was too
respectful, while others claim the US was not respectful enough. To me,
that says that the US got it right - and I believe that the burial at
sea was necessary to eliminate any possibility that his burial site
could be treated as a rallying point.

As new details of the raid continue to leak out, the real questions are
being pointed in the direction of Pakistan. What did they know and when
did they know that bin Laden was living large in their country?

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari submitted an op-ed
in the Washington Post today in response to the US mission that killed
Osama bin Laden in the town of Abbotabad, just miles from the Pakistani
capital of Islamabad.

Let us be frank. Pakistan has paid
an enormous price for its stand against terrorism. More of our soldiers
have died than all of NATO’s casualties combined. Two thousand police
officers, as many as 30,000 innocent civilians and a generation of
social progress for our people have been lost. And for me, justice
against bin Laden was not just political; it was also personal, as the
terrorists murdered our greatest leader, the mother of my children.
Twice he tried to assassinate my wife. In 1989 he poured $50 million
into a no-confidence vote to topple her first government. She said that
she was bin Laden’s worst nightmare — a democratically elected,
progressive, moderate, pluralistic female leader. She was right, and she
paid for it with her life.

Some in the U.S. press have suggested that Pakistan lacked vitality in
its pursuit of terrorism, or worse yet that we were disingenuous and
actually protected the terrorists we claimed to be pursuing. Such
baseless speculation may make exciting cable news, but it doesn’t
reflect fact. Pakistan had as much reason to despise al-Qaeda as any
nation. The war on terrorism is as much Pakistan’s war as as it is
America’s. And though it may have started with bin Laden, the forces of
modernity and moderation remain under serious threat.

My government endorses the words of President Obama and appreciates the
credit he gave us Sunday night for the successful operation in Khyber
Pakhtunkhawa. We also applaud and endorse the words of Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton that we must “press forward, bolstering our
partnerships, strengthening our networks, investing in a positive vision
of peace and progress, and relentlessly pursuing the murderers who
target innocent people.” We have not yet won this war, but we now
clearly can see the beginning of the end, and the kind of South and
Central Asia that lies in our future.

Only hours after bin Laden’s death, the Taliban reacted by blaming the
government of Pakistan and calling for retribution against its leaders,
and specifically against me as the nation’s president. We will not be
intimidated. Pakistan has never been and never will be the hotbed of
fanaticism that is often described by the media.

Zardari is
in a real tough position right now. He's got to simultaneously defend
his country from claims that he was harboring al Qaeda's top dog,
claiming that he was providing assistance (unidentified and
uncorroborated by US officials who have studiously stated that they
shared no aspects of this mission with any other country, including
Pakistan), and has to be worried that the Islamists will try to topple
his government because of its existing ties with the US (a belief that
the government is complicit with the US even if there was no actual).
Given the way that Pakistanis love their conspiracy theories
(even more than the nutjobs who think Osama wasn't real, wasn't killed,
or any permutation thereof), all kinds of speculation is rampant in
Pakistan right now over what Pakistan's government knew and when did
they know of it.

Fact is, no one really knows what the Pakistani government knew about
bin Laden's location, but it is highly suspicious that he was able to
live in relative comfort in a compound just yards from the country's
military academy and where military personnel go to retire. It is
plausible that members of the military or the ISI were complicit in
keeping bin Laden's whereabouts hidden but it once again indicates the
difficulty of trusting the Pakistani government to reveal key details. Those questions are being asked by members of Congress on both sides of the aisle - and they have good reason to ask those questions. Similar questions are being asked by other countries, including the UK.

Zardari is right to state that his country has been ravaged by Islamic
terrorists, particularly Taliban and al Qaeda. Yet, each time the
Pakistani government (whether under Zardari or his predecessor, Pervez
Musharraf) cracks down, it doesn't go far enough to eliminate the
threat. It does just enough - anything more and the Islamists in the
Pakistani government (Parliament, military, ISI) would thwart further
action.

He further claims that radical Islamist parties make up a small fraction
of his government, but that overlooks those other groups that lean
towards radicalism and who do not condone crackdowns against the
Islamists.

Pakistan barely maintains control over the frontier provinces, which are
overrun with Taliban and have hosted al Qaeda for years on end. Efforts
to thwart the Taliban have met with mixed success - and the body count
among Pakistani soldiers is quite high and

The country can't align itself too greatly with the US for fear of
assassinations or coups to install a more Islamist government, but doing
nothing allows the Islamists free reign in the frontier provinces.

The question of what Pakistan knew and who knew might be revealed in the
treasure trove of intel captured by the special forces team that
carried out the mission. They recovered numerous computers, hard drives,
thumb drives, and other intel that can be critical to unraveling the
logistical network and other contacts, as well as identifying other key
members and locations. It could also shed light on other planned or
contemplated targets.

Bin Laden's death may also result in a reappraisal of ongoing military
operations by the ISAF in Afghanistan, including the possible withdrawal
of troops earlier than 2014. I think that would be a serious mistake,
considering that al Qaeda and the Taliban remain a serious threat, and
allowing them safe haven is a mistake.

SCLC TODAY

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